WORSHIP LEADERS
HOW TO GET OVER YOURSELF ( AND LET OTHERS LEAD ) | Jon Nicol
Do you look around your worship ministry and think , “ I don ’ t have leaders .”
Or maybe , “ I have potential leaders , but I don ’ t have time to develop them .”
Or , if somebody really gets honest , “ I have potential leaders , but they can ’ t lead as good as me .”
I get it . I ’ ve believed those things at different times in ministry . But I realized that if I wanted my team to be exceptional every Sunday , it would require more leaders than just me .
Now , before we talk about how to get others to lead , let me give you some context for this article . A few months ago , I started a series called The Eight Essential Growth Engines . A growth engine is a collection of the systems and processes in each area of your ministry that produce a set of outcomes . Not only do these engines make your worship ministry go , they make it grow .
“ Leadership development ” is our final growth engine we ’ re discussing , and it ’ s one of the most critical .
As you think about leadership development within your team , it ’ s easy to get hung up on questions like these :
• “ What if I don ’ t have anyone who can do what I do ?”
• “ What if I don ’ t have time to train and mentor others ?”
• “ What if I know someone won ’ t be nearly as good at it as I am ?”
To help you with each of these three ‘ big but ’ barriers , do these four critical things :
1 . GET OVER YOURSELF . There are others who can lead . They just haven ’ t shown up or been revealed yet .
You ’ ll never have time to train or mentor others until you make it a priority and intentionally invest in someone . And of course , someone won ’ t be as good at something as you — at least not at first . How did you get to where you are now ? Time , experience , training , mentoring , etc .
( By the way , if the whole “ get over yourself ” sounds harsh , all leaders need to hear that at different phases of their growth . I sure did … and I ’ m sure I will again .)
2 . START DELEGATING ADMINISTRATIVE TASKS OR OTHER DUTIES TO FREE UP YOUR TIME . If a task takes you 15 to 20 minutes , and it would take you 4 - 5 hours to show someone else how to do it , you should just do it yourself . Right ?
WRONG . The “ faster / easier to just do it myself ” is a lie that holds back your leadership growth .
At my last church , one of the jobs I delegated was stage set-up . It ‘ only ’ took me 2 - 3 hours a week — barely 5 % of my total hours . And it wasn ’ t easily delegated because the platform was configured differently every week . Also , it required re-patching the digital board . It was easier to do it myself . But I knew moving keyboards and rolling cables wasn ’ t the best investment of my time ( or the church ’ s money ).
I invested several months training a college student to take over stage set-up for me before he was fully competent . Each week I trained him , it took MORE time than had I just “ done it myself .” But before long , I was at a place where I spent 5 minutes a week creating a stage map and 10 minutes double-checking his work before each rehearsal .
And it wasn ’ t just the 2 + hours I gained back each week . Since stage set-up was a task I dreaded , there was an emotional cost to it . After delegating it , I was free from that .
3 . CREATE WORKFLOWS AND SOPS . Even if you don ’ t have someone to take over a task or area of your ministry , pretend like you will , and soon . How ?
For each task or role you know you want to delegate , document how you do the work — step-by-step and as detailed as possible . This will become your workflow or SOP — standard operating procedure .